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Ford misses council meeting for football, team driven in private TTC bus

&rdquo;I&rsquo;ve made a commitment, I&rsquo;ve done it for 20 years, and I&rsquo;m not changing,&rdquo; Mayor Rob Ford said after missing 2.5 hours of council to coach a game.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is shown at a football practice at Don Bosco Secondary School in Etobicoke in September. He missed two hours of Thursday's council meeting to coach a playoff game. (STEVE RUSSELL / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO)

By Daniel DaleStaff ReportersJeff Green

Fri., Nov. 2, 2012

Mayor Rob Ford missed more than two hours of Thursday’s council meeting to coach a high school football playoff game — after which his players were driven back to school in a private TTC bus.

The police were called to the Father Henry Carr field, police spokesperson Const. Tony Vella said, after a late-game altercation between the Carr coach and the referees. With Ford’s Don Bosco Eagles holding a commanding lead, the game was declared over with time still on the clock.

An officer then called the TTC to request the bus. Ford, who said Sunday that “council comes first” over football, did not answer when asked by a reporter whether he had any role in prompting the bus request.

“The TTC bus was ordered because the normal bus to take the Don Bosco players back to Don Bosco was to arrive at 4:30, but they decided to — instead of having them wait outside in the cold — that they asked for a TTC bus early,” said Catholic school board spokesperson John Yan.

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The meeting ended on a happy note for Ford. Because of his ongoing conflict-of-interest court case related to an integrity commissioner report, council voted to defer the consideration of another report in which the commissioner recommended that he be formally reprimanded for disparaging the chief medical officer and failing to adequately apologize.

TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said the call for the bus came at 3:46 p.m.

Ross said police occasionally ask for a “shelter bus” to provide temporary refuge in the case of fires and other incidents. The TTC always complies, he said, and was not told “who, or what team, or why” on Thursday.

He said it is “not frequent” that the TTC provides special transportation in such cases — he cited the 2008 Sunrise Propane explosion as one example — but added, “I wouldn’t say it never happens.”

One Don Bosco player boasted about the “personal TTC bus” on Twitter. When someone asked him how Don Bosco had gotten one, he responded, “Bro our coach is the mayor of Toronto lol.”

Ford missed about 2.5 hours of the meeting, drawing criticism from both his regular foes and Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday. At a private meeting with council allies at his mother’s house on Sept. 30, several loyalists told him he should not leave City Hall to coach.

“I told him that a lot of us have to make personal sacrifices because of being a councillor. You accept that responsibility when you get elected,” said Holyday. “I’m missing my hockey right now . . . this is my job, so this is where I must be. And I think there’s a few people down here that don’t take this seriously enough.”

Ford, who said as a candidate that he would quit coaching if elected, skipped 5.5 hours of a September executive committee meeting for a pre-season scrimmage. Asked why he left council on Thursday, he spoke rapidly and forcefully.

“I only missed two hours. A semi-final football game. It’s the playoffs. We’re undefeated. We’re number two in the city. We’re in the championship game. If I’m (not there), what are we gonna do, just forfeit the game? These kids live — this is their education that rides on these games,” he told reporters.

Asked why assistant coaches couldn’t have filled in, Ford said, “It’s impossible.” He conceded that someone would have to fill in if he was “hit by a car.”

He said the altercation “could have gotten really ugly” if he had not been there: “Very few people can control these kids.” And he ended a media scrum on a defiant note.

“I made a commitment. And I’m not a quitter. I made a commitment; I commit to things. Maybe you guys have a different way of doing things, but I don’t . . . I’ve said this from day one: I’ve made a commitment, I’ve done it for 20 years, and I’m not changing. Thank you.”

On Ford’s Sunday radio show, he said flatly that he would be “playing hooky from City Hall” during the Nov. 27 council meeting to attend five high school bowl games. When his guest, Councillor Frances Nunziata, prodded him to say he was joking, he said, “Of course . . . Council comes first, obviously.”

On Thursday, Ford missed an unusually prolonged debate on a mundane motion related to Toronto Community Housing. Ford’s council critics said his allies intentionally dragged out the proceedings to give him time to get back to City Hall for the significant transit debate that followed. He missed a brief part of that.

Ford was far from the only member of council to skip a portion of the three-day meeting. Sixteen councillors were absent for the final votes late Thursday.

Ford was embroiled in a separate football-related controversy in September when he was found to be using junior staffers and a city car to help with the Don Bosco team. He has never directly addressed the issue.

He has also been castigated for personally asking top city officials in July to approve repairs outside his family company’s building. He has denied that he received special treatment.

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